Mission

Another celestial body has been added to NASA's bucket list as the space agency officially asks the US Congress for US$30 million for the first mission aimed at exploring Jupiter’s moon Europa. Part of the FY 2015 NASA Planetary Science budget, it would fund further development of an unmanned probe to study place in the Solar System outside of Earth where life may exist. Read More

For decades, landing on Mars has captivated the imagination of earthlings as the obvious next step in space exploration after landing on the moon, but NASA is also looking into ways to send a manned mission to a more forbidding neighbor – Venus. Read More

As Philae begins its long sleep, bedded down on the surface of comet 67P/Churymov–Gerasimenko (67P), mankind's attention shifts back to the Rosetta spacecraft as she begins the next phase of her audacious mission. Over the course of the next year, Rosetta will become the first spacecraft to orbit and observe a comet as it approaches the Sun, allowing the already phenomenally successful mission to detail the evolving characteristics of 67P as the heat from our star causes a dramatic rise in activity. Read More

An unmanned resupply mission to the International Space Station has suffered a catastrophic failure six seconds after launch from the Wallops Island launch facility, Virginia. All personnel have been accounted for with zero injuries, however damage was sustained to the launch site. Read More

Following an exhaustive scientific analysis, mission operators at the ESA have confirmed Site J as the primary landing location for Rosetta's Philae lander. If all goes to plan, Nov. 12 will be a historic first for the human race, as we expand our scientific empire to a new and hostile territory with the first-ever attempted soft landing on a comet. Read More

In an experiment designed to look for the fundamental building blocks of matter in the dust clouds of interstellar space, NASA recently launched a high-altitude sounding rocket containing the Colorado High-resolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph (CHESS) payload. Enabling scientists to carry out the most comprehensive single instrument study of its type ever conducted, the research promises to give new insights into the formation of stars. Read More

SpaceX’s Dragon CRS-3 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) has once again been scrubbed. On Friday, NASA confirmed that the launch of the unmanned cargo ship has been delayed due to the failure of a tracking radar, which meant that the launch could not meet the minimum public safety requirements. Read More

Feeling very confident after the perfect landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars on August 6th, NASA has announced its next mission to the Red Planet. In 2016, the US space agency will launch the unmanned InSight lander to Mars. Unlike Curiosity, InSight will be a static lander loaded with instruments designed to study the deep geology of Mars and answer such questions as whether the core of the planet is liquid or solid, and why Mars hasn’t any shifting tectonic plates like Earth. Read More

An unexpected measurement has been achieved with the Venus Express, a satellite currently studying the atmosphere of Venus. While the satellite was not fitted with instruments to directly measure atmosphere density, the scientists have discovered by measuring the drag as the Venus Express experiences air resistance that the atmosphere is 60 percent thinner than expected. This "working on the fly" approach could allow the scientists to extend the life of the craft allowing them to collect more data. Read More

Move over Google Maps, NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft has given scientists the tools to construct the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system and where it resides in the Milky Way galaxy. NASA says the new view will change the way researchers study the interaction between our galaxy and sun. Read More